


I Know Places

by misschristmas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Purgatory, Slash, Songfic, Taylor Swift - Freeform, barely a songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:36:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3478091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misschristmas/pseuds/misschristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel watches him, his back to the tree just across from where Dean sits. His features erupt into something primal and panicked. Even in the fading light, he can see the terror on the face Dean is trying to arrange into a countenance of nonchalance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Know Places

**Author's Note:**

> ...back on the fanfic train after a twelve-year hiatus. Taylor does that to me. Love feedback, and love all of you. 
> 
> Shippers gonna ship!

Benny senses it's time to leave the two of them alone here in the glade where they've squatted for the night. He makes his excuses - some humorless joke about needing to tend to himself. He knows they are all too tired to delve into the subtext of that comment. Too tired and too cold and too bloodied. 

They don't risk a fire, and Dean finds himself in a dangerous reverie, reminiscing for just one stolen moment about the time he taught Sammy how to build one. He remembers fire - the look of it dancing, the smell of embers floating up and away with the wind, but he can't remember heat. Purgatory has ripped it from his catalog of sensations, and the realization hits him so unexpectedly that in a second his breath hitches in his throat and his eyes grow wide with shellshocked madness. This is never going to end. They will never get out of here, this perpetual night where every sound might be the harbinger of death. Dean will never feel warm again. Always hunted in the dark, the hounds always on their heels. He tries to push the thought away, but he is paralyzed with uncharacteristic doubt. He pants shallowly, quietly, fighting like hell to get his shit under control before the other two notice that the man who has been leading their unlikely trio through the woods is losing it. 

Castiel watches him, his back to the tree just across from where Dean sits. His features erupt into something primal and panicked. Even in the fading light, he can see the terror on the face Dean is trying to arrange into a countenance of nonchalance. Cas might have believed it, too, if he couldn't feel Dean's soul quaking beneath the surface of his skin, wracked with irreconcilable tension. And though he knows he ought to remain vigilant (he seems to always draw the short straw, being the one in the trio who needn't sleep), he pushes himself up from where he rests to soldier forward, as always, toward Dean.  

_Just grab my hand and don't ever drop it, my love._  

Kneeling at his side, Castiel picks up Dean's hand and places a single kiss on his palm. Slowly, he looks up, willing Dean to meet his gaze. 

_They are the hunters. We are the foxes, and we run._

Dean's eyes are flashing everywhere but on Cas, unfocused and wild, seeking out the next monster - almost wishing it will come to take him. He's in uncharted territory, and he doesn't know how to steer himself out of this internal tempest. He's been scared before; he's been worried, despairing, exhausted. But even in his darkest moments, Dean has to admit he never truly lost hope. Here in this mindless panic he cannot grasp a single image of it, its very definition lost to him. His breath quickens as if he were physically chasing the idea of hope across this godforsaken wilderness, and then he feels Castiel's hand at the back of his neck, turning his head toward his. 

_I know places we won't be found. They'll be chasing their tails trying to track us down._  

Cas tried to leave him alone, tried to spare Dean the burden of dragging him out of this place, but in the end he will always choose to be wherever and whatever this human needs him to be. And he knows he can't make it okay, not really, not here. But fuck - he can try. 

Dean's eyes take a while to steady on Cas, and when they do he is still sucking in air like he's drowning. Castiel feels a wave of the thing that happened to him in a heartbeat and across millennia, that thing he identified as love when one morning Dean prayed to him drunkenly and finally said the words to him out loud. When Dean came hard into him a few minutes later, it was Castiel's name on his lips, strung together with  _fuckIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou._  

It won't be like that here, but Castiel cups Dean's face with his other hand, his thumb stroking the shaking man's eyebrow. Dean's expression shifts, and Cas feels the change in his soul. Breath evens out, pulse slows, and Dean lets out a whimper. The sound rings with vulnerability, and he hates himself for it. He's the strong one, but maybe he's not doing so well in this world away from the booze - the stupid, endless nights of escape Dean tells himself he needs to Feel Okay. And fuck, here's Cas trying to hold him together when Dean knows he's struggling daily against the guilt of everything he's done. In a flash he remembers Cas trudging into that pond and dissolving into the creatures he carried bodily from this place, and it breaks his heart anew. He's so tired of this fucking reality. He doesn't think he can stand it a minute longer.

He wraps one hand around the wrist of Castiel's hand still cupping his face and drops his head to his chest. He can't look at the angel as he confesses, his voice breaking. 

"I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want us to be in this place... running... anymore, Cas." 

_...I know places we can hide._  

Castiel circles his hand down from around Dean's neck to cup his other cheek and kisses his muddy hair. He tilts Dean's head up and leans in, hovering just over the man's lips. He doesn't pray anymore, not really, but in that moment he finds himself begging God for one moment of peace with Dean Winchester - one small instant in Purgatory when the monsters relent and they can warm one another. He screams it in his head, demands this favor from His Father, tells himself that even if he has done nothing to earn it Dean certainly has. He tells Dean a truth.  

"You are the place I've been going since my creation. You're the place I'm in." 

He closes the space between them. 

_They take their shots, but we're bulletproof. You know for me, it's always you._  

Dean falls hard into the kiss. 

Maybe God came out of retirement to grant them a respite; maybe not. But Castiel's hands are in Dean's hair and roaming down his back, the both of them covered in dirt and blood and the ick of Leviathan, and he doesn't give a damn about whatever is lurking in the trees. He feels Dean come back to life at his touch and sighs when he feels the man working to divest him of his pants. There he is, his Winchester: the one who buries his fear and pain in liquor and sex in a very human way Castiel suspects he will never understand. The Winchester who, Castiel knows, can only let himself be loved when he feels some modicum of control. Cas hands over the reins and lets Dean shove his pants down past his ass to grip his cock firmly.

He strokes Cas' member into hardness, breaking the harsh kiss to spit crudely into his other hand. The next instant he has two fingers working into Cas' hole, never pausing long enough to remember they've let their guard down. If he stops to take stock of this moment, the moment will disappear. He's pumping Cas with both hands now, over his shaft, scissoring in and out, and he feels an absurd, fleeting sense of power. He knows how to fuck. This hellhole hasn't taken that from him, not yet.  

Castiel tries to hide his discomfort at the intrusion, and he forgets the corporeal pain very briefly as his hands wander down to undo Dean's jeans, pulling out his own hard length. Dean grinds his erection against Castiel's, stroking them both in one hand. When Dean inserts a third finger, the makeshift lubrication long dried out, Cas loses himself and cries out, eyes squeezed shut.

Dean pauses at the noise, looks up to see Castiel trying to mask the physical hurt. He slows then, the intoxicating feeling of control already spread throughout his body. With a few more shallow thrusts with his hand, Castiel's eyes peel open to see Dean staring straight into him, wordlessly begging for forgiveness and permission at once.

_In the dead of night, your eyes so green... I know for you it's always me._

Castiel would never have imagined himself capable of such a gesture in this realm at this time, but his lips curl slightly upward into his quintessential unassuming smile. Dean stops moving for a second, taken all aback by the juxtaposition of his Cas against this backdrop, and suddenly there it is again: hope.

Dean leans forward to capture his angel in a kiss that ignites them both, and suddenly they're reeling away from this hell, away from the things that go bump in the night, away from regrets and unsaid words and the endless hunt. Dean moves inside Castiel, and he understands what the angel said earlier: this space between them is somewhere else. Neither hallowed ground nor cursed land, but somewhere in between the two maybe, or perhaps sacred and profane and secular all at once. He listens to the sound of their breath, ragged from exertion, and it's the sound of a long blast from a lighthouse cutting through the winds of a storm, calling him home. 

Castiel arches up beneath him, and Dean breaks the kiss to watch him as he comes undone. His name spills from Cas' beautiful mouth, and Dean learns in the final harsh buck of his hips that Cas is the journey and the destination, the road he's been on since forever. 

_I know places._

He comes hard, and then Castiel is pulling him down so they lay chest to chest on the tattered grass, both of them panting unapologetically. In a few minutes, they'll untangle their limbs and dress, and Dean will sit back against the tree, and for one half-heartbeat Castiel will feel as if he's being dismissed before Dean looks up at him and wordlessly moves his weapon away from the rootless expanse of ground next to him. Castiel will sit down, pull his knees to his chest, and try not to wonder about what this means. Dean will nod off, so very emotionally and physically spent, and his head will loll over onto Cas' shoulder in his sleep. Castiel will lean his head back down against Dean's, eyes and ears again trained for the noises of beasts roaming the forrest around them. They will stay like that until morning.

But right now, they feel the place they're in. Clinging to one another, they memorize the way the light hits the eclectic architecture, the smell of leather and red clay and smoke, the dizzying feeling that you get when you ask yourself about your purpose in this universe. It is a place they have always known, and they will return here to hide for many years still.

 


End file.
